Jan 06, 2018 Saturday
Bedtime Story
May 29, 1453 Constantinople Falls
Some papal ships did set out to sail from
Genoa, Venice and Naples, but alas they reached the capital of Eastern Roman
Empire a little too late.
The city finally fell on May 29, 1453 and
this event marked the end of Byzantine Empire which in a way was continuation
of the Roman Empire dating back to 27 BC.
Not only was this watershed event a source
of personal humiliation for Pope Nicholas V that took the sheen of all his
papal achievements, but it was a huge blow for the entire Christendom.
Nicholas V lamented the fall as a double
blow to both Christianity and to Greek literature, very aptly put as the
“second death of both Homer and Plato”.
Following its fall in 1453 to the 1821 when
the Greek revolutionaries started the Greek war of Independence, Constantinople
remained the rule of Ottoman Empire.
In fact, it was turned into the capital
city of the Ottoman Empire.
Because Constantinople was under the rule
of Ottoman Empire and thereby Islam, the followers of Orthodox Church have
almost completely rejected the four ancient sees of Jerusalem, Antioch,
Alexandria and Constantinople.
It’s almost as if the few centuries of
Islamic rule has disgracefully and irreparably contaminated the “holy soil” of
these once revered places by Christians.
Hence the center of authority in the
Orthodox Church has become centered on Eastern Europe such as Greece or Russia.
Most of the Greece had come under the rule
of Ottoman Empire even decades before the fall of Constantinople.
The Ottoman Empire was now almost perfectly
located in the very “center” of the world over the land which once used to be
the Fertile Crescent with its capital in Constantinople and having total
control of the Mediterranean basin.
This gave them access to Europe, Anatolia
in the north, Northern Africa in the south and the Levant in the east.
Control over the Mediterranean Sea also
gave them access to the Atlantic Ocean far in the west.
This also made the Empire the center of
interactions between the East and the West for almost six centuries.
Initially its main political competitors or
even enemies were the Hapsburg Empire and the Russian Empire but later almost
all the empires that were not Islamic in origin would gang up against it in
unison just to break the back of common enemy that differed from them
fundamentally in terms of religious belief.
The Greeks were never willing to be ruled
by the Ottomans and several Greek uprisings took place to get rid of the yolk
of the Ottoman Rule.
So when the Greeks started their war of
independence in 1821, they were assisted by the Russian Empire, Great Britain,
Kingdom of France and several other powers who you would note would in future
go to war against each other.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling
chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night mon ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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